Vraath Keep
Vraath Keep is a ruined castle in the Witchwood. Its story is open to anypony who makes a DC20 Knowledge Local (Elsir Vale) or History check; DC is 10 for Elsir Vale natives. This matches the description of Vraath Keep; if not, it's a dead ringer for it in its construction. The walls themselves look quite stable. It's a simple, one-story structure, with a tall tower in the back. Ground surrounding the keep is dry, like the summer. The keep itself looks to have taken damage over the years; you can see, in addition to the front gate, a place on the side where numerous hurled boulders have managed to penetrate the wall. A castle like this would be stationed along the path through a wood in order to easily protect the road from bandits and invaders. The clearing around it gives little shelter for a sneak attack, but if the ponies keep low, it's unlikely anyone will see them without themselves being seen, at least. The Story of Vraath Keep In the time of the Tiri Kitor pegasi's ancient kingdom of Rhest, well before the founding of Equestria, one small fortress of earth ponies stood along the thin trade path that would one day come to be called the Dawn Way. This was Vraath Keep, and its earth pony soldiers guarded travelers from any who would prey upon them from the ground. The skies, of course, belonged to the pegasi. A few years before the fall of Rhest, an ambitious young pony named Amery Vraath — names were more complicated in those days, but it translates to something like "Too-Smart-For-His-Own-Good Soldier" — inherited the keep. When the Rhestilor kingdom dissolved, Amery claimed the forest as his own. He sought to cleanse the Witchwood of what he saw as an "unnatural taint" and danger: the Twistusk clan of forest giants. Early one summer day, Amery led a band of mercenaries and adventurers against the giants, forcing them to flee into the mountains and burning their homes to the ground. Their victory was short-lived. A week later, the surviving Twistusks attacked the keep in a tremendous thunderstorm. Without the might of the Tiri Kitor of Rhestilor to control the weather, the giants' own druids turned it against the earth ponies, along with hurled boulders and poisoned arrows. When the sun rose, four giants were dead in the keep, but none of the residents remained. The few survivors were taken by the giants — eaten, some say, or sold into slavery, or perhaps there were simply no survivors other than Amery Vraath. Amery did not last much longer than his soldiers: a giant's arrow poisoned him, and he wasted away in the vault below the keep, hiding from the giants. The Twistusks have not been seen in years. Perhaps Amery managed to kill them off after all, or perhaps they simply realized they were unwanted. Rumors persist that Amery's ghost still haunts the ruins, however many hundreds of years later, and those few who dare to travel the Dawn Way at night say they sometimes hear the sounds of his anguished cries coming from somewhere deep underground. Category:Lore Category:Witchwood